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This study explores the challenges of assessment feedback in a business school in the UK. Like many business schools, it operates at volume with large class sizes and an internationally diverse student cohort. To operate effectively, it has adopted a bureaucratic administrative approach to assessment in order to address concerns over timeliness, consistency, and quality of feedback. Drawing on socio-constructivist and sociocultural perspectives, this study explores the role of dialogue and reciprocity in the assessment feedback process with a focus on grade descriptors and their role in fostering student success in their learning. Through an action research approach with a cohort of students on a three-year module, the study examines how grade descriptors are experienced by students and student perceptions of their purpose and function within the higher educational organisational context and the positioning of tutor and student in the assessment process. The findings suggest a desire amongst students for a more collaborative learning approach and the benefits for students of doing so. The paper concludes with discussion of the implications of adopting a more dialogic approach to assessment feedback for students, tutors, and universities.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the variations in vocabulary and syntax in Instagram posts relating to food among younger and older men and women in the United Kingdom. The study sought to determine if differences in these linguistic features would affect the expression of users on the platform, which was the dependent variable under assessment. To achieve this aim, Instagram posts about food, posted by a sample comprising 37 young adult men and 43 young adult women aged between 18-24 years and by 47 older men and women aged 59 years or older, were collected and analyzed for their vocabulary and syntactic features. Vocabulary was measured in terms of the number of words used in the posts and their mean values, given that the number of posts varied by gender and age group. Syntactic characteristics were measured by counting the presence or absence of a subject and verb, the quality of adjectives used, and any reference to time or location concerning food quality. The results were presented using tables and charts, and examples were provided for each observation presented in the results section. The findings of the study support the view that gender and age influence social media posts concerning vocabulary and syntax. The study discovered that younger men and women tend to use a more extensive range of words and adjectives of varying quality, while older people tend to use fewer words and unique quality adjectives. Memory loss, which affects older people, could explain the observed tendency of using fewer words. This research highlights a few areas for future research, such as exploring the relationship between the use of slang words and age or gender and examining the effects of age and gender on social media use in different cultures. Additionally, the study acknowledges limitations such as the small sample size and the limitations of using Instagram as a representation of social media behavior as well as confining the study to a single country affecting its generalizability. In conclusion, this study provides evidence that age and gender are significant factors influencing the linguistic features of Instagram posts on food. This research is a valuable addition to the current literature on social media communication and provides useful insights for marketers and social media users.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused severe disruption to education in the UK in 2020, with most of the school teaching moving online and national school examinations being cancelled. This was particularly disruptive for those taking end of school examinations in preparation for higher education. Biological science courses require students to absorb a lot of new vocabulary and concepts, with examinations traditionally focusing on content recall rather than reasoning. Students who had entered university in September 2019 were compared with those arriving in September 2020 with respect to their knowledge of bioscience vocabulary and understanding of key concepts. Results showed no significant difference between those who had gone through the examination process in 2019 relative to those who had not, in 2020. This suggests the cramming of information for examinations has no detectable effect on the knowledge and understanding of biology that students take with them to university.

Background: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a condition which affects an individual's ability to use and understand language. Terminological confusion, and the use of non-evidence-based diagnostic criteria has impacted access to services for this population for several decades. Changes in terminology and diagnosis were proposed as part of a UK-based consensus study, Criteria and Terminology Applied to Language Impairments (CATALISE), in 2016 and 2017. Since the publication of the recommendations, there have been active efforts across several English-speaking countries to support uptake of these recommendations into policy and practice. Aims: The aim of the study was to explore the experiences of individuals who have been leading the dissemination of the CATALISE recommendations since their publication in 2017. The study was undertaken to inform future implementation efforts aimed at facilitating the adoption of the recommendations into policy and practice. Methods & Procedures: Researchers, practitioners and parents from nine countries were recruited to the study (n = 27). Online focus groups and semi-structured interviews were conducted using topic guides informed by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research. Inductive thematic analysis was undertaken. Preliminary findings were member-checked prior to completion of the analysis. Outcomes & Results: CATALISE recommendations were described as partially adopted by participants. Dissemination strategies included building a coalition, conducting educational meetings, and developing educational materials. Common barriers to implementation related to the complexity and compatibility of the recommendations, and practitioner confidence. Four themes were identified across the data set to guide future implementation efforts: (a) ride the wave, craft the narrative (b) reach across the divide, be brave (c) create space for multiple voices and, (d) support for speech and language therapists on the front line. Conclusions & Implications: Individuals with DLD and their families should be included in future implementation planning. Engaged leadership is essential to address issues of complexity, compatibility, sustainability and practitioner confidence if CATALISE recommendations are to be integrated into service workflow and processes. Implementation science can provide a useful lens to progress future research in this area.

This paper investigates the role of interpreters in addressing cultural differences in the context of a cross-cultural collaborative teacher professional development project. Based on positioning theory, this study employed interpreter-mediated interactions and interviews to reveal the complex roles that interpreters played when interpreting culture-related terms. Findings revealed that interpreters' roles were shifting between those of transmitters of information, cultural insiders and constructors of shared understandings between interlocutors. Notably, the lack of training in this specialised field obliged interpreters to rely mainly on their personal experiences to judge which role they should play in the face of cultural differences.

Sentence production and comprehension both draw on linguistic knowledge, but current research is unclear on whether these fundamental language tasks involve similar or distinct competitive processes. Previous studies suggest that production and comprehension may involve similar conflict resolution processes, but that production may additionally recruit motor-related conflict not necessarily present in comprehension. To examine these possibilities, we combined an experimental animacy-driven manipulation eliciting difficulty in separate production and comprehension tasks with an examination of how this manipulation interacted with individual variability in motor-related and lexicosemantic conflict resolution performance beyond vocabulary measures. We reasoned that a different pattern of interactions for production and comprehension would point to distinct processes across these tasks, whereas interactions with the same individual performance task would indicate similar conflict-related processes. We found that beyond a significant role of vocabulary, only a measure of context-dependent lexical ambiguity resolution interacted with the animacy manipulation in the production and the comprehension task. These findings suggest a role for linguistic knowledge and similar lexically driven competitive processes in both sentence production and comprehension. Alongside current computational models, these results raise the possibility that despite different task demands, some production and comprehension competitive processes are not entirely distinct from one another nor separable from lexical knowledge. Implications for current views on the relationship between sentence production and comprehension are discussed.

English is clarified as a Germanic language, and it began in what is now the British-Isles. After years of development, English language has many varieties in different parts of the world. Different varieties differ in accent, vocabulary, grammar, discourse, sociolinguistics, and have its respective characteristics in pronunciation, tone, intonation, spelling and so on. Therefore, it is important for English language learners to observe the differences in language use. The present paper is an attempt to explore the regional characteristics of the two most commonly used varieties of the English Language--British English and American English. It is concluded that there will be intercommunications which will make the regional differences mild and easily understood. However, some differences may disappear, the others will remain so.

Describing events may be challenging for any child, but children who use communication aids may face unique linguistic, pragmatic, and strategic challenges in conveying information with the communication means they have available. This study explores strategies used by young, aided communicators when describing the content of a video unknown to their communication partners. The participants of the study were 48 aided communicators (aged 5;3-15;2) from nine countries and seven language groups and their communication partners (parents, professionals, and peers) who used natural speech. Descriptive and statistical analyses were utilized to investigate the relationships between individual characteristics, linguistic and non-linguistic factors, linguistic strategies, and performance in conveying the content of the video event. Analyses of the 48 videotaped interactions revealed the use of a variety of linguistic elements and multimodal strategies, demonstrating both creativity and challenges. Success in relaying messages was significantly related to age, mode of communication, and individual profiles, such as everyday communication functioning and comprehension of grammar. Measures of receptive vocabulary and non-verbal reasoning were not significantly related to communicative success. The use of shared context and negotiation of meaning of potentially ambiguous utterances demonstrate the shared responsibility of disambiguation and meaning construction in interactions involving aided and naturally speaking communicators.

Bilingualism is a multi-faceted experience and bilinguals differ in how they use their languages in daily life. Therefore, assessments of bilingualism that consider the role of (social) context are needed when describing bilinguals. In this study, we evaluated how (reliably) the Language and Social Background Questionnaire (LSBQ; Anderson et al. 2018) describes language experiences of bilinguals living in the UK. Across 163 participants, nine factors were found to describe their daily-life language experiences in different contexts or with different interlocutors. Factors describing language use also correlated with objective English (L2) proficiency. These findings emphasise the need for studies to characterise bilinguals' daily-life language use in more detail and with a focus on the multi-dimensionality of bilingualism. Test-retest reliability (assessed across two weeks) was moderate to substantial, showing that the LSBQ might be a reliable tool to capture these bilingual experiences.

This research focuses on the assessment literacy, that is, the understandings of assessment terminologies and how they relate to each other, in academic staff developers in the UK, collected via questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Academic staff developers have been trained and certified to support new higher education lecturers in learning,teaching, and assessment practices, and provide continuing professional development for more experienced staff. Results showed inconsistent and differing understandings between and within individuals. These inconsistencies may reflect the lack of consistency of terminology in the literature. This lack of common understanding has far-reaching implications and needs reconciling to enhance personal and collective assessment literacies, particularly since our respondents have responsibility for training the next generation of academics.

The aim of the study was to investigate how raters come to their decisions when judging spoken vocabulary. Segmental rating was introduced to quantify raters' decision-making process. It is hoped that this simulated study brings fresh insight to future methodological considerations with spoken data. Twenty trainee raters assessed five Chinese students' monologic texts on vocabulary in this study. Both segmental rating and overall rating were retrieved from the raters. Rasch analysis suggested variation between raters in their judgment of vocabulary, although consistency was found in general. Besides, there was a mismatch between candidates' vocabulary scores and their lexical statistics. The raters' decision-making process was generally cumulative.

The current study investigates the extent to which receptive vocabulary size test scores can predict second language (L2) speaking ability. Forty-six international students with an advanced level of L2 proficiency completed a receptive vocabulary task (Yes/No test; Meara & Miralpeix, 2017) and a spontaneous speaking task (oral picture narrative). Elicited speech samples were submitted to expert rating based on speakers' vocabulary features as well as lexical sophistication measures. Results indicate that vocabulary size was significantly associated with vocabulary rating. However, learners with large vocabulary sizes did not necessarily produce lexically sophisticated L2 words during speech. A closer examination of the data reveals complexities regarding the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and speaking. Based on these findings, we explore implications for L2 vocabulary assessment in classroom teaching contexts and provide important suggestions for future research on the vocabulary-and-speaking link.

To support inclusive and equitable study, higher educational institutions (HEIs) often address students categorised as 'disabled' in communications to provide information about support or encourage disclosure of information about conditions. However, if students do not identify with the language used it creates barriers to accessing support. There is little understanding of preferences and comfort with language in this area. This paper describes a study in a UK HEI developed to investigate language preferences for common points of communication with the HEI and level of comfort with particular statements. The outcomes of a prior study to elicit language models were used to develop a survey to capture views at scale from students with declared disabilities (n = 723). Terminology addressing students as 'disabled' was uncomfortable for many (particularly those with mental health conditions or specific learning difficulties, such as dyslexia). 'Additional study needs' was preferred. However, we find divergence in preferences across contexts, rather than a consistent preference for any recognised language model. We also identify clusters with significantly different perspectives on language within the population. This leads us to argue that differential and inclusive approaches should be explored, rather than solely focusing on a single model of appropriate language.

Internationalization of the curriculum is of increasing interest in many universities; yet, the terminology used to describe it is highly varied and it is not clear that students understand its core concepts. This study explores students' understandings of the terms global citizenship and cross-cultural competency, and compares them with use in the literature and by experts. A large-scale questionnaire of students from a range of disciplines is supplemented with qualitative data from pedagogic and internationalization experts. Findings indicate that student understandings of both terms were mixed, and frequently differed from the way the terms are used by experts and in the literature. The concept of cross-cultural competency was more likely to invoke a sense of agency among students than was global citizenship, contrary to how they are depicted in the literature. This suggests that there may be some pedagogic benefits to be gained from using the former term.

The article deals with the problem of conceptual aspects of professional training for English language teachers in the UK. It is found that many curricula of British universities are based on the technology and procedure of exclusively professional training of future specialists, whereas general scientific and additional intellectual training is incorporated into extracurricular activities as proved by the ratio of study time allocated to different courses. Humanities and social sciences courses provide students with fundamental knowledge and the ability to navigate in the ever-growing volume of scientific knowledge, possibility and knowledge of social interaction. General professional and specialist courses cultivate professional mastery of future specialists and the ability to express, if necessary, professional mobility. It is clarified that English is a broad subject, which comprises three complementary elements studied either separately or combined. They are the following: English Literature (interpretation and analysis of literary texts and study of the history and theory of literature), English Language (the study of spoken, written and multimodal communication, their historical development and their distinctive levels of analysis: phonology, grammar and lexis) and creative writing (the practice of writing, the study of the literary and cultural contexts of writing and the exploration of the relationships that writing generates between writer, publisher, text and audience). It is concluded that professional training of English language teachers in the UK is based on conceptual aspects of such principles as neobehaviourism, liberalism, progressivism, social reconstructivism, cognitivism and humanism.

In this paper, I narrate the long process of my encounters with English language learning and teaching, manifesting characteristics of English teaching at different levels of schools in mainland China. After viewing the limitations of English teaching in mainland China from my fresh point of view as a UK visiting scholar, some suggestions are proposed for its improvement and development.

The current A-level biology curriculum includes a broad coverage of all the biosciences which demands knowledge of a wide range of biological vocabulary. Students (n = 184) from two UK universities were presented with a list of vocabulary, associated with a 'Revise Biology' text which highlighted key terms that students should know. Lecturers (n = 26) were asked which of these terms they expected students to know, or be aware of. Findings revealed that students' claimed knowledge of vocabulary exceeded lecturer expectations. In addition, there were a number of terms which students did not understand and lecturers did not expect them to know, which could be removed from A-level biology courses. This is discussed in relation to whether A-level curricula need to be so content heavy and whether lecturers would benefit from knowing more about their students' knowledge of discipline-specific terms.

Purpose: Reading comprehension is a key indicator of academic and psychosocial outcomes. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) tend to find reading comprehension challenging. This study aimed to explore the literal and inferential (cohesive, elaborative, and lexical) comprehension of children with DLD, their typically developing (TD) peers, and, uniquely, a group of children with low language (LL) proficiency. Method: Children aged 10-11 years with either typical development (n = 16), LL proficiency (n = 14), or DLD (n = 14) were recruited from 8 primary schools. They completed a battery of standardized language and literacy assessments. Responses to literal and inferential questions on the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Second UK Edition (Wechsler, 2005) were analyzed. Results: A disproportionate difficulty in answering inferential relative to literal questions was found for the DLD group compared to the LL and TD groups. Children with DLD were significantly poorer at elaborative inferencing than both their peers with LL proficiency and TD peers, but there were no group differences in cohesive or lexical inferencing. There was a significant positive association between inferencing ability and vocabulary knowledge, single word reading accuracy, grammatical skill, and verbal working memory. The importance of single word reading accuracy was especially evident as a partial mediator of the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and inferencing ability. Conclusions: These results indicate that interventions targeting the reading comprehension of children with DLD should focus on elaborative inferencing skill. There are also clinical implications as the development of new standardized assessments differentiating between inference types is called for.

In English primary schools, provision of musical music lessons is often lacking. This paper focuses on whether a lack of clarity around primary music pedagogy might be a contributing factor. Some comparisons are drawn with the realm of second-language teaching. A small qualitative study is reported in which three teacher-educators with responsibility for primary music, from different higher education institutions, were interviewed to explore their pedagogic perspectives and articulacy. There was little evidence of shared pedagogy and interviewees often struggled to explain effective practice. However, one common theme was the implication that to teach musically a teacher needs to 'feel like a musician' at some level. It is suggested that teacher-educators might benefit from more clearly articulating 'pedagogic content knowledge' (Shulman, Lee. 1987. "Knowledge and Teaching: Foundations of the New Reform." "Harvard Educational Review" 57 (1): 1-23) for primary music, including the dimension of 'feeling like a musician'. This could, in turn, enhance work with student teachers and perhaps enable more teachers to teach musically.

Coming some four years after the introduction of the new National Curriculum, this article considers the media storm and debate around the concept of chronology and how it should be taught in schools. Drawing on empirical evidence, the article strongly suggests that young children are capable of grasping complex temporal concepts, specifically chronology, if teachers carefully plan for their development through targeted activities. Within the article suggestions for such activities, including whole-school approaches, are outlined. In conclusion, the article calls for further research into how history can be taught in a way that develops chronology and engenders a love for and enjoyment of the subject by all pupils in our primary schools.

This article explores the potential implications of theorizing in translingualism and translanguaging for foreign language teaching and learning. I discuss key terminology and introduce a translingual continuum as a potential way to understand language use practices both within and across communities. I report on an exploratory study into the self-identified future language use profiles of 116 adult EFL learners studying in the United Kingdom, the majority of whom perceive a need for translingual practices in their varied futures. I discuss the implications, both of these findings and other research for language teaching pedagogy, considering how translingual competence may differ from communicative competence, and providing practical suggestions for teachers working in different contexts. I also discuss how reimagining the language classroom as a translingual community potentially provides a way of redefining notions of authenticity and the role of the teacher as a translingual practitioner, thereby avoiding the divisive native-speaker--non-native-speaker dichotomy.

It has been said that the difference between a dialect and a language is that a language has an international border and a flag. But that is not entirely true. Canada has a border, a flag, and two major languages, somewhat in the fashion of Belgium. Unlike Belgium, where they call the local varieties of French and Dutch "Walloon" and "Flemish," respectively, Canadians have not come up with new names for their languages to make them seem more their own. Although the major languages of Canada may have some differences from the languages of the United Kingdom and of France, in most polite circles the languages are known simply as English and French. The importance of the French and English conflict and coexistence is so pervasive that the Canadian census provides data on bilingualism only in terms of French and English. This article does not deal directly with Francophone/Anglophone issues, although it cannot ignore them completely. The author's focus is on the description and reputation of Canadian English in the scholarly, popular, and Internet sources that deal with the variety of English spoken in Canada, the native language of nearly two-thirds of the population.

Background: Lack of agreement about criteria and terminology for children's language problems affects access to services as well as hindering research and practice. We report the second phase of a study using an online Delphi method to address these issues. In the first phase, we focused on criteria for language disorder. Here we consider terminology. Methods: The Delphi method is an iterative process in which an initial set of statements is rated by a panel of experts, who then have the opportunity to view anonymised ratings from other panel members. On this basis they can either revise their views or make a case for their position. The statements are then revised based on panel feedback, and again rated by and commented on by the panel. In this study, feedback from a second round was used to prepare a final set of statements in narrative form. The panel included 57 individuals representing a range of professions and nationalities. Results: We achieved at least 78% agreement for 19 of 21 statements within two rounds of ratings. These were collapsed into 12 statements for the final consensus reported here. The term "Language Disorder" is recommended to refer to a profile of difficulties that causes functional impairment in everyday life and is associated with poor prognosis. The term, "Developmental Language Disorder" (DLD) was endorsed for use when the language disorder was not associated with a known biomedical aetiology. It was also agreed that (a) presence of risk factors (neurobiological or environmental) does not preclude a diagnosis of DLD, (b) DLD can co-occur with other neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g. ADHD) and (c) DLD does not require a mismatch between verbal and nonverbal ability. Conclusions: This Delphi exercise highlights reasons for disagreements about terminology for language disorders and proposes standard definitions and nomenclature. [This paper was also written by members of the CATALISE-2 Consortium.]

Background: Well-documented associations exist between socio-economic background and language ability in early childhood, and between educational attainment and language ability in children with clinically referred language impairment. However, very little research has looked at the associations between language ability, educational attainment and socio-economic background during adolescence, particularly in populations without language impairment. Aims: To investigate: (1) whether adolescents with higher educational outcomes overall had higher language abilities; and (2) associations between adolescent language ability, socio-economic background and educational outcomes, specifically in relation to Mathematics, English Language and English Literature GCSE grade. Method & Procedures: A total of 151 participants completed five standardized language assessments measuring vocabulary, comprehension of sentences and spoken paragraphs, and narrative skills and one nonverbal assessment when between 13 and 14 years old. These data were compared with the participants' educational achievement obtained upon leaving secondary education (16 years old). Univariate logistic regressions were employed to identify those language assessments and demographic factors that were associated with achieving a targeted A*-C grade in English Language, English Literature and Mathematics General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) at 16 years. Further logistic regressions were then conducted to examine further the contribution of socio-economic background and spoken language skills in the multivariate models. Results & Outcomes: Vocabulary, comprehension of sentences and spoken paragraphs, and mean length utterance in a narrative task along with socio-economic background contributed to whether participants achieved an A*-C grade in GCSE Mathematics and English Language and English Literature. Nonverbal ability contributed to English Language and Mathematics. The results of multivariate logistic regressions then found that vocabulary skills were particularly relevant to all three GCSE outcomes. Socio-economic background only remained important for English Language, once language assessment scores and demographic information were considered. Conclusions & Implications: Language ability, and in particular vocabulary, plays an important role for educational achievement. Results confirm a need for ongoing support for spoken language ability throughout secondary education and a potential role for speech and language therapy provision in the continuing drive to reduce the gap in educational attainment between groups from differing socio-economic backgrounds.

The expressive lexical skills of 53 Polish bilinguals aged 24-36 months living in the UK and Ireland were assessed using Polish and British English adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Polish vocabulary scores were compared to those of 53 Polish monolinguals matched for age, gender and parental education. The bilinguals were born to two Polish parents and mostly lived outside Poland since birth. Results showed substantial differences in Total Conceptual Vocabulary and single-language vocabulary scores between the groups. However, the groups did not differ on Total Vocabulary measures. In the bilingual sample, there were significant correlations between children's frequency of language use and their vocabulary scores in the same language. A negative correlation between children's frequency of English use and their Polish vocabulary scores was found. A complex pattern of factors relating to children's low performance in Polish emerged. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that low birth weight, parental concern about language, maternal educational level as well as maternal frequency of Polish and English use contributed to explaining children's Polish vocabulary scores. Overall, results indicated the need for early additional support of the first language (L1) if long-term balanced bilingualism is to be attained.

Babysign classes are increasingly popular across the UK. Benefits are said to include increasing child vocabulary, reducing frustration, and improving parent-child relations. A further relationship between the use of babysign and maternal mind-mindedness (MM) has been suggested. It was hypothesized here that parents choosing babysign classes would describe their child using more mind-minded comments than those attending other toddler classes and that their children would have greater language skills. The MM scores of 34 mother-child dyads attending parent-toddler activities were measured using Meins et al.'s (2012) research protocol. Mothers also completed a communicative checklist for language and gesture use and understanding. Results indicate that mothers who choose to use babysign describe their children with significantly more mind-minded attributes, but language skills do not differ between the two groups of children. This supports the hypothesis that mothers using babysign would show more MM than mothers not using babysign.

Background: While practitioners are increasingly asked to be mindful of the evidence base of intervention programmes, evidence from rigorous trials for the effectiveness of interventions that promote oral language abilities in the early years is sparse. Aims: To evaluate the effectiveness of a language intervention programme for children identified as having poor oral language skills in preschool classes. Methods & Procedures: A randomized controlled trial was carried out in 13 UK nursery schools. In each nursery, eight children (N = 104, mean age = 3 years 11 months) with the poorest performance on standardized language measures were selected to take part. All but one child were randomly allocated to either an intervention (N = 52) or a waiting control group (N = 51). The intervention group received a 15-week oral language programme in addition to their standard nursery curriculum. The programme was delivered by trained teaching assistants and aimed to foster vocabulary knowledge, narrative and listening skills. Outcomes & Results: Initial results revealed significant differences between the intervention and control group on measures of taught vocabulary. No group differences were found on any standardized language measure; however, there were gains of moderate effect size in listening comprehension. Conclusions & Implications: The study suggests that an intervention, of moderate duration and intensity, for small groups of preschool children successfully builds vocabulary knowledge, but does not generalize to non-taught areas of language. The findings strike a note of caution about implementing language interventions of moderate duration in preschool settings. The findings also highlight the importance of including a control group in intervention studies.

It is well established that adults converge on common referring expressions in dialogue, and that such lexical alignment is important for successful and rewarding communication. The authors show that children with an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and chronological- and verbal-age-matched typically developing (TD) children also show spontaneous lexical alignment. In a card game, both groups tended to refer to an object using the same name as their partner had previously used for the same or a different token of the object. This tendency to align on a pragmatically conditioned aspect of language did not differ between ASD and TD groups, and was unaffected by verbal/chronological age, or (in the ASD group) Theory of Mind or social functioning. The authors suggest that lexical priming can lead to automatic lexical alignment in both ASD and TD children's dialogue. Their results further suggest that ASD children's conversational impairments do not involve an all-encompassing deficit in linguistic imitation.

Perceptual simulations are unconscious and automatic, whereas perceptual imagery is conscious and deliberate, but it is unclear how easily one can transfer perceptual information from unconscious to conscious awareness. We investigated whether it is possible to be aware of what one is mentally representing; that is, whether it is possible to consciously examine the contents of a perceptual simulation without information being lost. Studies 1 and 2 found that people cannot accurately evaluate the perceptual content of a representation unless attention is explicitly drawn to each modality individually. In particular, when asked to consider sensory experience as a whole, modality-specific auditory, gustatory, and haptic information is neglected, and olfactory and visual information distorted. Moreover, information loss is greatest for perceptually complex, multimodal simulations. Study 3 examined if such information loss leads to behavioral consequences by examining performance during lexical decision, a task whose semantic effects emerge from automatic access to the full potential of unconscious perceptual simulation. Results showed that modality-specific perceptual strength consistently outperformed modality-general sensory experience ratings in predicting latency and accuracy, which confirms that the effects of Studies 1 and 2 are indeed due to information being lost in the transfer to conscious awareness. These findings suggest that people indeed have difficulty in transferring perceptual information from unconscious simulation to conscious imagery. People cannot be aware of the full contents of a perceptual simulation because the act of bringing it to awareness leads to systematic loss of information.

For professionals working with multilingual children, detecting language deficits in a child's home language can present a challenge. This is largely due to the scarcity of standardized assessments in many children's home languages and missing normative data on multilingual language acquisition. A common approach is to translate existing English language vocabulary measures into other languages. However, this approach does not take into account the cultural and linguistic differences between languages. This pilot study explored whether English and home-language receptive vocabulary skills can be objectively and reliably screened using a tablet application. Preliminary data on monolingual and multilingual vocabulary skills was collected from 139 children aged 6-7 years. A tablet application was designed to assess children's receptive vocabulary in both English and an additional eight languages using a four-choice picture paradigm. Linguistically controlled and pre-recorded target items are presented orally via the tablet in each language and responses are made via the touch screen and are automatically scored. The English version of the test was administered to 67 monolingual and 72 multilingual children, while 38 multilingual children also completed the test in their home language. Test criteria measures, including reliability and concurrent validity showed satisfactory results. These findings suggest that the tablet application could be a useful tool for professionals to screen receptive vocabulary skills in monolingual and multilingual children. Limitations of the first version of the receptive vocabulary screener and future steps are discussed.

Little is known about implicit morphological processing in typical and atypical readers. These studies investigate this using a probe detection task with lures sharing morphological, orthographic, or semantic overlap with the probe. Intermediate and advanced readers (reading ages = 9;1-12;9) perform more poorly when there is more linguistic overlap. Novice readers (reading ages = 5;7-8;0) were influenced only by orthographic overlap and not by semantics, indicating that use of orthographic processes typically precedes integration of semantic and morphological skills. Children with otitis media (repeated ear infections) had phonological awareness difficulties but performed age appropriately on the probe detection task, indicating that morphological processing is not constrained by phonology. In contrast, dyslexic children's performance reflected a failure to remember distinctions between words sharing root morphemes. Dyslexic children are sensitive to morphology but may over-rely on root morphemes. This pattern differed from reading-ability-matched children and children with circumscribed phonological difficulties.

The title "physical education" (PE) is the traditional taxonomy used to represent the education discipline. Health and physical education (HPE) is regarded to be an all-encompassing health-dimensional title that has been recently embraced by various education systems around the world. Hence, it can be argued that PE and HPE are often used interchangeably by educationalists, portraying a similar meaning and understanding. This can be regarded as internationally confusing, as historically PE and HPE have represented different and at times paradoxical discourses and ideologies. Amongst the ambiguity of which title to use, PE or HPE, new terms of branding such as "physical literacy" and "health literacy" have re/emerged. The purpose of this interpretivist study is to identify if associated terms used for the original PE label are a help or hindrance to practitioners? Participants were asked an open-ended question relating to PE nomenclatures. The data gathered were analysed and findings confirmed that practitioner confusion does exist. It is suggested that children are first and foremost "physically educated"; therefore a strong, clear and comprehensive grounding in quality PE is essential for teachers and students.

The Working Memory Rating Scale (WMRS) was designed as a behavioral rating tool to assist teachers in identifying students at risk of working memory difficulties. The instrument was originally normed on 417 monolingual English-speaking children from the United Kingdom. The purpose of this study was to test the reliability and validity of the WMRS on 459 first- to third-grade Spanish-speaking English Language Learners. Results indicated the one-factor model demonstrated adequate fit to the data. High convergent validity emerged with the Conners' rating scale, but weak correlations occurred with achievement, vocabulary, phonological, short-term memory, and working memory measures. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Background: Strong associations between infant vocabulary and school-age language and literacy skills would have important practical and theoretical implications: Preschool assessment of vocabulary skills could be used to identify children at risk of reading and language difficulties, and vocabulary could be viewed as a cognitive foundation for reading. However, evidence to date suggests predictive ability from infant vocabulary to later language and literacy is low. This study provides an investigation into, and interpretation of, the magnitude of such infant to school-age relationships. Methods: Three hundred British infants whose vocabularies were assessed by parent report in the 2nd year of life (between 16 and 24 months) were followed up on average 5 years later (ages ranged from 4 to 9 years), when their vocabulary, phonological and reading skills were measured. Results: Structural equation modelling of age-regressed scores was used to assess the strength of longitudinal relationships. Infant vocabulary (a latent factor of receptive and expressive vocabulary) was a statistically significant predictor of later vocabulary, phonological awareness, reading accuracy and reading comprehension (accounting for between 4% and 18% of variance). Family risk for language or literacy difficulties explained additional variance in reading (approximately 10%) but not language outcomes. Conclusions: Significant longitudinal relationships between preliteracy vocabulary knowledge and subsequent reading support the theory that vocabulary is a cognitive foundation of both reading accuracy and reading comprehension. Importantly however, the stability of vocabulary skills from infancy to later childhood is too low to be sufficiently predictive of language outcomes at an individual level -- a finding that fits well with the observation that the majority of 'late talkers' resolve their early language difficulties. For reading outcomes, prediction of future difficulties is likely to be improved when considering family history of language/literacy difficulties alongside infant vocabulary levels.

This study evaluated whether core vocabulary intervention (CVT) improved single word speech accuracy, consistency and intelligibility in four 9-11-year-old children with profound sensori-neural deafness fitted with cochlear implants and/or digital hearing aids. Their speech was characterized by inconsistent production of different error forms for the same lexical item. The children received twice weekly therapy sessions for eight weeks. Fifty target words were drilled and changes in production assessed for accuracy and consistency. Generalization of consistency and accuracy was assessed on non-targeted words. There were four assessment points: six weeks pre-therapy; immediately before therapy; immediately following therapy and six weeks post-therapy. In addition, 10 unfamiliar listeners judged the intelligibility of audio recordings of the children's speech before and after therapy. The children's consistency and accuracy of single word production improved following CVT. Consistency generalized to untreated words. Sentence intelligibility ratings improved and more target words were identified after therapy. These case studies suggest that CVT merits further investigation as an effective intervention approach for deaf children, enhancing consistency, accuracy and intelligibility of speech.

This study of 4- to 6-year-olds had 2 aims: first, to determine how lower level comprehension skills (receptive vocabulary and grammar) and verbal memory support early higher level comprehension skills (inference and literal story comprehension), and second, to establish the predictive power of these skills on subsequent reading comprehension. Eighty-two children completed assessments of nonverbal ability, receptive vocabulary and grammar, verbal short-term memory, and inferential and literal comprehension of a picture book narrative. Vocabulary was a unique predictor of concurrent narrative comprehension. Longitudinally, inference skills, literal comprehension, and grammar made independent contributions to reading comprehension 1 year later. The influence of vocabulary on reading comprehension was mediated through both inference and literal comprehension. The results show that inference skills are critical to the construction of text representations in the earliest stages of reading comprehension development.

"Big history" is a term receiving a great deal of attention at present, particularly in North America where considerable sums of money have been invested in designing curricula and assessment tools to help teachers teach history at far larger scales of time than normal. Hawkey considers the pros and cons of incorporating components of "big history" into history curricula , recognising some of the limitations of the approach, but nevertheless finding important ideas upon which history teachers might draw. In particular, Hawkey identifies three ways in which teachers might start to think about how some of the ideas of "big history" might find a home in current history curricula.

Previous studies using direct forms of vocabulary instruction have shown that newly learned words are integrated with existing lexical knowledge only "after" off-line consolidation (as measured by competition between new and existing words during spoken word recognition). However, the bulk of vocabulary acquisition during childhood occurs through incidental exposure to verbal material; hence, the role of consolidation may be different or limited when learning is less explicit. To address this, 40 children (ages 7-10 years) and 33 adults listened to a fictitious story that contained 12 novel words (e.g., "daffodat"). Lexical integration was measured by comparing pause detection latencies to existing competitors (e.g., "daffo_dil") and control words for which no new competitor had been encountered. Pause detection latencies were slower for existing competitors than control words (signifying increased lexical competition) 24 hr after exposure to the novel words but not immediately. Both groups recalled significantly more novel words when tested 24 hr after hearing the story than immediately. It is important that children with better expressive vocabulary knowledge showed larger consolidation effects for the novel words, both in terms of strengthening of explicit knowledge and their integration with existing knowledge. Off-line consolidation is therefore required for the integration of new and established knowledge when words are learned under relatively naturalistic conditions. Furthermore, a richer body of established vocabulary knowledge may facilitate (or benefit from) swift lexical integration of new vocabulary.

Many have warned against a direct "brain scan to lesson plan" approach when attempting to transfer insights from neuroscience to the classroom. Similarly, in the effective design and implementation of learning technology, a judicious interrelation of insights associated with diverse theoretical perspectives (e.g., neuroscientific, pedagogical and classroom praxis) may be required. A design-based research approach to the development of learning technology informed by neuroscience may be one way of achieving this interrelation. Accordingly, here we report on some of the preliminary research of a web app, known as "zondle Team Play", that allows teachers to teach whole classes using a games-based approach and which draws on concepts from neuroscience. Rather than just exploring "what works" in terms of the technology, low-fidelity prototyping and participant design helped us explore aspects of praxis and affordances of the technological design that were contingent upon each other. Five cycles of design, intervention, analysis and reflection revealed some potential benefits of a neuroeducational approach to learning technology design, including the development of related pedagogy, identification of immediate and future neuroeducational research questions and the development of language and terms suitable for communicating across interdisciplinary boundaries.

Slovene Sign Language (SZJ) has as yet received little attention from linguists. This article presents some basic facts about SZJ, its history, current status, and a description of the Slovene Sign Language Corpus and Pilot Grammar (SIGNOR) project, which compiled and annotated a representative corpus of SZJ. Finally, selected quantitative data extracted from the corpus are presented. The article discusses certain lexical and semantic properties of SZJ, for example, the role of fillers and gestures. Figures are compared to related works, particularly corpus-based studies of British Sign Language (BSL) and Auslan. The article concludes by outlining plans for future research and ways in which the present corpus could improve basic reference works for SZJ and serve as a basis for new technologies.

In recent years, "technology-enhanced learning", or "TEL", has become a widely accepted term in the UK and Europe for describing the interface between digital technology and higher education teaching, to a large extent taking the place of other recently popular terminologies such as "e-learning", "learning technology" and "computer-based learning'. Yet there has been little critique in the literature of the assumptions embedded within the terminology of TEL: rather it has been adopted as an apparently useful, inoffensive and descriptive shorthand for what is in fact a complex and often problematic constellation of social, technological and educational change. This paper subjects the term to a deeper analysis, drawing on insights from critical posthumanism, science and technology studies and Biesta's critique of the "learnification" of education. In particular, it foregrounds the instrumentalisation of technology enacted by TEL, explores some of the problematic links between TEL and the philosophy of transhumanism, and critiques TEL for failing properly to interrogate its own ontological biases. The paper suggests that we need to be more careful with, and more critical of, the terminology we adopt to describe and determine the field.